Artist exploring physical and emotional geography

Intro

Luce Choules

“My work hangs precariously on the singular idea of collapse – a situation experienced as a lone or collective action.”

OVERVIEW

Choules is a UK-based artist operating from field centres in France and Spain, and works internationally. Using still and moving image, performance and sculpture, she is interested in the movement and behaviour of animate and inanimate objects – her work observing fragility and the environmental shift in human nature. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; and presents academic papers on the subject/object of fieldwork in artistic practice in addition to a series of public performances and artist talks on a new environmental (re)turn. Choules is curator of an international esparto project, and coordinates the itinerant artist network TSOEG.org

ARTIST STATEMENT

“Using still and moving image, performance and sculpture, I am interested in the movement and behaviour of animate and inanimate objects – my work observing fragility and the environmental shift in human nature.

Image capture and moving narratives are fundamental to our relationship and appreciation of the Earth. In the pursuit of data what is lost becomes a gap in recognition – my research suggests this interstice has the potential to become an interval of insight, experience and imagination, that extends a geomorphic thinking of place as past action and future motion set in the here-and-now.

My research draws parallels across Arts and Geography fieldwork methods; and contributes to a wider discussion on instability and environmental change, using experiential fieldwork methods to monitor erratic performances in the landscape. Against the pervasive anthropocentric view, this research investigates how the natural environment with all its fragments is itself an act – a mobility of material already activated.

This work adds to current debate involving the recording and documentation of performance and live event in the arts, exploring slow capture in an age of acceleration at the intersection between visual arts practice and physical geography, to investigate image-making as a form of material transformation and transportation.”

BIOG

Luce Choules is a UK-based artist operating from field centres in France and Spain, and works internationally. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, coordinating expeditions and fieldwork planning activities as part of the annual Explore event for over a decade – this year working with Carlo Rizzo of the Exhibition Road Commission, London to deliver a curated programme. As an independent scholar, she presents academic and performance papers on the subject/object of fieldwork in artistic practice, in addition to a series of public live events and artist talks on a new environmental (re)turn.

Luce is currently artist/curator of international project ‘Esparto’(2016-), with touring exhibition, symposium and trilingual publication; has recently returned from the US opening of her Rabbit Island residency exhibition with performance lecture at DeVos Art Museum, Michigan (2016-17); and her Bideford Black commission (shown Devon 2015, Lincoln 2016) has been selected for the upcoming touring performance exhibition ‘Documents, Alternatives’ (UK/Australia 2017-18). Major long-term projects include: ‘Guide74’, ‘Estudio de Campo’, ‘Navigating the Erratic’, ‘The Insurmountable and Unknowable Object’, and ‘Mountain Festival’.

Luce founded and coordinates the itinerant artist network TSOEG.org (2015-date) making opportunities for members to meet through public events and digital dialogue. Her published work is held in many public collections.